The Canticle of Many Voices
A Chronicle of Lord Ambassador To’mas Waverly
Lord Ambassador To’mas Waverly - Sky Marshal of the Realms, Knight of Celene, and Guardian of Greyhawk -had returned home.
Not to the Yeomanry where he was born, but to Merrydale—the town he and the Guardians of Greyhawk had once saved from vampires, and where he met his wife, Lily Nelst. After being granted lordship of the region, he believed that settling down with Lily and their daughter, Brielle Laughingbrook, would quiet the long war inside him. He imagined bards singing of the Age of Heroes as something finished, and peace finally settling over Greyhawk.
He was wrong.
He was tired.
After decades of war against chaos, dragons, psychedelic mushroom cults, and things far worse (few horrors rival a kender vampire), all he wanted was to sit beneath the lanterns of the Ol’ 97 Tavern, with its crooked beams and hearth-warm glow, beside his wife and daughter.
In time, the Ol’ 97 became famous for two things: its blackberry stout—and the night Lord Waverly saved it almost single-handedly. Even now, music seemed to drift through its doors when no one was playing.
To’mas would sit on the balcony with Lily in the evenings, watching fireflies flicker like distant stars.
“Peace suits you,” she would say.
To’mas would smile.
But he could not sit still.
The world felt… not peaceful.
Quiet.
Empty.
Even Brielle noticed.
“You’re listening for something,” she said once, watching him tune his lute for the tenth time without ever playing a note.
“To what?” Lily asked gently.
To’mas looked toward the sky.
“Everyone.”
The Call of Wildspace
One night, while Merrydale slept, To’mas climbed the tower overlooking the town and activated one of his last Musical Cubes—a humming crystal engine he had built long ago to experiment with sound-magic.
Instead of music, the cube answered with voices—hundreds of them—scattered, lonely, unreachable.
The Cube was hearing the realms.
And the realms were singing alone.
That night, To’mas did something no lord was expected to do.
He left.
Through ancient spelljamming charts and hidden harbors of the Greyspace Sea, To’mas traveled into Wildspace aboard a living crystal ship powered by harmonic engines. There, among astral whales, elven armadas, and drifting bard-monasteries carved into moons, he discovered something the Material Plane had forgotten:
Music was not entertainment.
It was navigation.
Civilizations in Wildspace tuned themselves to shared melodies. Societies coordinated through harmony rather than hierarchy. Planets did not worship gods—they tuned themselves to ideals.
To’mas studied with:
Astral choristers who bent gravity with rhythm
Void monks who sang time backward
Living chord-spirits that existed only as song
He learned to encode meaning into melody:
Empathy as harmony
Courage as tempo
Peace as resonance
And he realized what Greyhawk lacked.
It had music.
But it did not have a shared song.
The Canticle is Born
When To’mas returned, he did not come back as a knight.
He returned as a composer of civilization.
Using profits from his vast gas-mining empire—a network of lighter-than-air extraction towers that powered spelljammers, sky-cities, and airships—he expanded the Musical Cube into something far greater:
The Canticle of Many Voices
A crystalline network of harmonic relays able to:
Capture bardic performances
Encode them with emotional magic
Transmit them through the Ethereal
Receive songs from anywhere
Bards could now sing from:
Desert cities
Underdark caverns
Floating islands
Remote monasteries
Lost villages
…and be heard everywhere.
No longer bound by geography, fear, or kings.
The New Alignment
Something changed.
People stopped rallying behind banners.
Stopped kneeling to tyrants.
Stopped killing for crowns.
Instead, they tuned themselves to songs.
Each culture found its own melody—but all shared the same emotional grammar:
Empathy
Unity
Joy
Nonviolence
Creative expression
War began to feel… off-key.
Hatred lost its rhythm.
Cruelty no longer harmonized.
Even the gods noticed.
Some raged.
Some listened.
Brielle Laughingbrook
When Brielle came of age, she joined the Guardians of Greyhawk—not as a noble’s daughter, but as something new.
Her codename was Azure.
She carried no instrument.
She carried the wild.
The Vibe of Peace
And so the Flanaess changed.
Not because To’mas conquered it.
But because he let it hear itself.
That is why the future of Greyhawk is peaceful.
Not because there are no armies.
But because no one wants to march
when they are already dancing.
They do not follow power.
They follow vibe.
